Bring on a Class War Already and Let Us Create our own Country!

I have no idea how I came across this opinion piece but I nearly gasped out loud when I got to the interesting points.

Judith Warner, whose pieces I do not read and do not care about because I find it dull to read about women writing about being parents, horrifically dull, did something that I appreciate much more than anyone else who bothered to comment on her piece. She took a random news article, extrapolated out, and used it as a basis for discussion of a much more relevant issue. She even took it to tandem warp speed. And for that, I must say thank you.

I've been saying the same thing she's been saying for a while, although not with the same angle or with the same stories. Mostly because there are certain things you know to be true and when you know something is true and you're just ranting to your friends, you don't need to provide historical evidence. Also, I tend not to focus terribly much on women v. men in terms of this particular issue.

The issue being: people who are less-educated, feel like they are blue collar, salt of the earth, country-bumpkin, regular folks, honest workers, part of the working class, part of the middle class, pretty much the vast majority of the nation, are incredibly, horribly, disgustingly jealous of and rude to and about anyone who they consider "better than them."

How do you end up being the focus of their ire? There are many many ways, very few of which you will ever have control over. You can be born a certain race. You can attend certain schools. You can be naturally intelligent. You can be genuinely interested in learning. You can have a natural disdain for unintelligent people and their activities. You can be born with money. You can be born with connections. You can possess the ability to use words that have more than two syllables. The list goes on.

A corollary of this is that those people who are naturally more intelligent and don't feel horrifically insecure about their places in the world and don't feel the need to prove themselves and fight to show that they are just as good if not better than people who have things naturally, have a very different take on life. As a general rule, they are looking to be happy. They do things that interest them, they enjoy their lives, they go on vacations when they feel like it, they explore new things, learn foreign languages, read books and newspapers, and do any number of other things they happen to find enjoyable. Because the others are so caught up in their obsession to have a certain type of job and own a house (lord knows why) and have a brood of children, they spend all their resources on these things. As a result, they can't go on vacations and don't have the time and money to read books or learn new things or do anything that, in my opinion, makes life worth living. And then they act like everyone should have to live the miserable existence they've created for themselves.

I don't deny that for some people there is simply more money, it is easier to get a job, so on and so forth, but everyone makes choices and everyone has talents and deficits and you work with it. But at the end of the day, you make the choices for yourself.

I know exactly what Ms. Warner is at least trying to say here in terms of discrimination against certain types of people. I am very familiar with consciously avoiding naming schools I've attended, degrees and honors and publications of mine, places I've visited, people I've met, and especially, of launching into any discussion that would be vaguely interesting to me. Since if I do engage in such a discussion, it will be seen as a display of intellectualism that will be the basis of attack. Sometimes people will tell me I am "showing off," which is obviously just a means of saying that if they were able to say something like that, they would do it to impress people. Other times, people stare at me blankly. Other times, they're simply hostile and try to attack everything I say by reference to matters that have nothing to do with what I am talking about, but this somehow makes them feel better.

For me, the result is that I don't feel comfortable living in this society. I shouldn't have to worry, in a way that is very similar to this story, that if I end up in front of a jury I will lose regardless of the merits of my case simply because I don't come off as sufficiently average. As though I should aspire to be average in lieu of being myself. I don't know that women specifically are targeted in this, but I do agree that they are more viciously targeted than men.

My solution is simple: all the interesting people can migrate to part of the world, people there who do not qualify can move, and we can all be happy together being ourselves forever, without the fear that a policeman will treat us worse because we take the time to dress nicely (have experienced that at least 15 times) or that a prosecutor will choose to pursue a case against us because of who we are or what we've accomplished, or that people will feel they have a right to take our possessions simply because they don't have them (constant issue). We currently live in a society in which there is indeed an unspoken understanding that the culturally poor have a right to attack the culturally rich in whatever form they can.

I am far past the point of caring about people who want to attack me or belittle me or drag me into their dramas. Far past. But I am also done with being subjected to their petty personal issues, which inevitably find their way projected onto me. When I was younger I didn't understand it and that was terrible. Knowing now, as I do, why people are more aggressive to me, why they give me the looks they do, why they won't help me out when they would help out anyone else in the same circumstances, it does somehow make it slightly easier. But it doesn't make it right.